Stories of Cats with real character, living in some of the most interesting buildings and communities in the UK. A beautifully presented gift book and a great companion volume to Cathedral Cats.

The shocking first true account from one of the young girls who lived through and survived the Rotherham sex abuse scandal.

The shocking first true account from one of the young girls who lived through and survived the Rotherham sex abuse scandal.

"Oh, there's a point to a summer fling. Trust me." The Inn is sold and Derian Lafleur has been accepted to two universities--one close by and one across the country. Before leaving Britannia Beach for good Deri wants to enjoy one last summer of sun and fun. However her best friend, Sophie Sakamoto, is more interested in making sure Derian has one last summer romance. The question is, with whom? Deri has had a crush on childhood friend Trevor Maverty since forever. But he's already taken. And Mason Cartwright is back in town after a year abroad. But will he remember her? Faced with tough choices, emotional revelations, and heart-breaking goodbyes, Derian knows that whatever happens it's definitely going to be an eventful summer....

She was just seven years old, wandering lost and hungry in the wilderness, when the solitary hunter took her in. In the years since then, he’s taught her how to survive in this desolate land where civilization has been destroyed and men are at the mercy of the elements and each other. But the man Elka thought she knew has been harboring a terrible secret. He’s a killer. A monster. And now that Elka knows the truth, she may be his next victim. Armed with nothing but her knife and the hard lessons Trapper’s drilled into her, Elka flees into the frozen north in search of her real parents. But judging by the trail of blood dogging her footsteps, she hasn’t left Trapper behind—and he won’t be letting his little girl go without a fight. If she’s going to survive, Elka will have to turn and confront not just him, but the truth about the dark road she’s been set on. The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape—told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity.

Britain’s World Scrabble Champion reveals the secrets for mastering the world of competitive Scrabble. If you play at home, online, in a club or in competitive tournaments this is the ideal insight into the mind of a Scrabble World Champion. Craig analyses opening positions, middle game scenarios and of course the end game. Walk through common rack and board problems encountered by Craig and other top players so you are ideally prepared for your next match. With an attractive design, and grids and diagrams throughout, this is an invaluable reference for all keen Scrabble? players. Contains complete lists of all the latest valid two and three letter words and their definitions from Collins Scrabble Words 2015.

‘A Cottage in the Country is a real feast for the senses. Get the coffee pot on, grab a pack of biscuits and let Maddie soothe your soul.’ – BestChickLit What do you do when your best friend has an affair with your husband of twenty-five years? Well, you pack your bags, grab half of the equity in the house you've both lovingly restored and run away to an idyllic little cottage in the country. Only, it’s not quite so idyllic when 1) Rustic charm sounds rather romantic, but the reality is something else … 2) The heavens decide to open on moving day and the rain just keeps on coming Maddie Brooks grits her teeth and hires the highly recommended 'man who can', ex-soldier, Lewis Hart. As he rips out the very shabby, and decidedly not-so-chic kitchen, reality sets in. Not only is he the most abrupt person she's ever met, but the man is a Neanderthal! As the flood waters rise, and the village is cut off, everything that could possibly go wrong, does. Hitting the big five-o is the final straw. No presents, family or friends—just infuriating Lewis, who can’t leave because the flood has now cut off his exit. How on earth is she going to get through this and put her life back together? Can Maddie Brooks become that ‘fifty-and-fabulous’ woman of her dreams?

A heart-warming story of a woman who devoted her life to helping others. This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time. She continued working after she married and her work took her to London and Doncaster, caring for children and miners. When she took a job as a pit nurse in Doncaster in 1974, she found that in order to be accepted by the men under her care, she would have to become one of them. Most of the time rejecting a traditional nurse’s uniform and donning a baggy miner’s suit, pit boots, a hardhat and a headlamp, Joan resolved always to go down to injured miners and bring them out of the pit herself. Over 15 years Joan grew to know the miners not only as a nurse, but as a confidante and friend. She tended to injured miners underground, rescued men trapped in the pits, and provided support for them and their families during the bitter miners’ strike which stretched from March 1984 to 1985. Moving and uplifting, this is a story of one woman’s life, marriage and work; it is guaranteed to make readers laugh, cry, and smile.

An utterly charming and tender story of the disparate tenants of a Brooklyn brownstone and the community they form around their ageing landlord when their home is suddenly threatened. Within a charming, if dilapidated, Brooklyn brownstone live a family of sorts: beautiful agoraphobe Adeleine, who surrounds herself with the past; Thomas, an artist who has shut away his materials in the wake of a stroke; Edward, a cynical stand-up comedian mired in depression and Paulie, a young man with William’s Syndrome, a disease that grants him the irrepressible cheerfulness of a six-year-old. Brought together by ageing landlady Edith, the tenants all live safely in tune with each other, even if they do keep to themselves. But when their home is suddenly and violently threatened, they are shocked into action. Infinite Home is a poignant story of how a community is built and torn apart, and how when lives interweave a beautiful and unusual tapestry is made.

Cisco Unified Computer System (UCS) is a powerful solution for modern data centers and is responsible for increasing efficiency and reducing costs. This hands-on guide will take you through deployment in Cisco UCS. Using real-world examples of configuring and deploying Cisco UCS components, we'll prepare you for the practical deployments of Cisco UCS data center solutions. If you want to develop and enhance your hands-on skills with Cisco UCS solutions, this book is certainly for you. We start by showing you the Cisco UCS equipment options, then introduce Cisco UCS Emulator so you can learn and practice deploying Cisco UCS components. We'll also introduce you to all the areas of UCS solutions through practical configuration examples. Moving on, you'll explore the Cisco UCS Manager, which is the centralized management interface for Cisco UCS. Once you get to know UCS Manager, you'll dive deeper into configuring LAN, SAN, identity pools, resource pools, and service profiles for the servers. You'll also get hands-on with administration topics including backup, restore, user's roles, and high availability cluster configuration. Finally, you will learn about virtualized networking, third-party integration tools, and testing failure scenarios. By the end of this book, you'll know everything you need to know to rapidly grow Cisco UCS deployments in the real world. What you will learn ?Set up your Lab using Cisco UCS Emulator ?Configure Cisco UCS, LAN, and SAN connectivity ?Create and manage Service profiles ?Perform various tasks using UCS ?Back up and restore Cisco UCS configuration ?Test various Cisco UCS scenarios

An elegant, powerful novel, set in Victorian England, a time not so different from our own… perfect for fans of THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER and THE SHADOW OF THE WIND Ambitious young journalist Thomas Kitson arrives at the battlefields of the Crimea as the London Courier’s man on the ground. It is a dangerous place, full of the worst horrors of war but Kitson is determined to make his mark. Under the tutelage of his hard-bitten Irish boss Cracknell, and assisted by artist Robert Styles, he sets about exposing the incompetence of the army generals. Two years later, as Sebastopol burns, Thomas returns to England under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to forget the atrocities of the Crimea, he takes a job as a ‘street philosopher’, a society writer reporting on the gossip of the day. But on the eve of the great Art Treasures Exhibition, as Manchester prepares to welcome Queen Victoria, Thomas’s past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying way…

Gain a deep understanding of the complexity of data structures and algorithms and discover the right way to write more efficient code About This Book ?This book provides complete coverage of reactive and functional data structures ?Based on the latest version of Java 9, this book illustrates the impact of new features on data structures ?Gain exposure to important concepts such as Big-O Notation and Dynamic Programming Who This Book Is For This book is for Java developers who want to learn about data structures and algorithms. Basic knowledge of Java is assumed. What You Will Learn ?Understand the fundamentals of algorithms, data structures, and measurement of complexity ?Find out what general purpose data structures are, including arrays, linked lists, double ended linked lists, and circular lists ?Get a grasp on the basics of abstract data types―stack, queue, and double ended queue ?See how to use recursive functions and immutability while understanding and in terms of recursion ?Handle reactive programming and its related data structures ?Use binary search, sorting, and efficient sorting―quicksort and merge sort ?Work with the important concept of trees and list all nodes of the tree, traversal of tree, search trees, and balanced search trees ?Apply advanced general purpose data structures, priority queue-based sorting, and random access immutable linked lists ?Gain a better understanding of the concept of graphs, directed and undirected graphs, undirected trees, and much more In Detail Java

Practical Computer Vision Projects About This Book ?Updated for OpenCV 3, this book covers new features that will help you unlock the full potential of OpenCV 3 ?Written by a team of 7 experts, each chapter explores a new aspect of OpenCV to help you make amazing computer-vision aware applications ?Project-based approach with each chapter being a complete tutorial, showing you how to apply OpenCV to solve complete problems Who This Book Is For This book is for those who have a basic knowledge of OpenCV and are competent C++ programmers. You need to have an understanding of some of the more theoretical/mathematical concepts, as we move quite quickly throughout the book. What You Will Learn ?Execute basic image processing operations and cartoonify an image ?Build an OpenCV project natively with Raspberry Pi and cross-compile it for Raspberry Pi.text ?Extend the natural feature tracking algorithm to support the tracking of multiple image targets on a video ?Use OpenCV 3's new 3D visualization framework to illustrate the 3D scene geometry ?Create an application for Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) using a support vector machine and Artificial Neural Networks ?Train and predict pattern-recognition algorithms to decide whether an image is a number plate ?Use POSIT for the six degrees of freedom head pose ?Train a face recognition database using deep learning and recognize faces from that database In Detail As we become more capable of handling data in every kind, we are becoming more reliant on visual input and what

"Key Features?Start developing immersive and interactive apps for Microsoft HoloLens ?Explore the Windows Universal Development platform for HoloLens development ?Leverage the full set of HoloLens sensors to create mesmerizing apps"

"About This Book ?Discover the secret to building highly portable apps that run on any machine with Windows Server 2016 anywhere, from laptops, desktop servers, and public or private clouds, without any changes to the code ?Build your company cost-effective, container-based apps that support large-scale, virtual cloud environments ?The most up-to-date help on the market, offering developers expert guidance in building and shipping high-quality apps, and also helping admins create infrastructure that's simple to maintain Who This Book Is For This book is for application developers with a basic programming knowledge of C#, ASP.NET, and PowerShell. IT Administrators or DevOps engineers with basic PowerShell experience can benefit by extending their learning to use PowerShell to manage containers on Windows environments and use additional management tools. What You Will Learn ?Build and deploy ASP.NET web applications as Windows Containers on Windows 10 (Desktop) and Azure using Visual Studio 2015, Docker, and PowerShell ?Build and manage custom images using Windows Server Core base OS image and Docker CLI, publish images to Docker, tag images, author Docker files, and so on ?Create enterprise-scale, production-grade container environments using Redis Cache containers and SQL Server containers with storage volumes, set up custom container networks, continuous integration, and deployment pipelines using VSTS, Azure, and Git ?Deploy a composite container environment using Docker Compose on Windows ?Learn to build applications using Microsoft's thinnest server platform - Nano Servers. Build custom Nano Server images and Nano Containers using Windows PowerShell and "

"Create real-time hybrid applications with the leader of HTML5 frameworks: Ionic Framework About This Book ?Step into the world of amazingly interactive and real-time app development using Ionic 2 ?Leverage the powerful Angular 2 along with Ionic to develop cutting edge apps ?Detailed code examples and explanations will help you get up and running with Ionic quickly and easily Who This Book Is For This book is for JavaScript developers with basic skills. No previous knowledge of Ionic is required for this book. What You Will Learn ?Understanding the world of the mobile hybrid architecture ?Scaffolding and working with Ionic templates ?Transforming a single page app to a multi-page app using Navigation Controller ?Integrating Ionic components, decorators, and services and rapidly developing complex applications ?Theming Ionic apps as well as customizing components using SCSS ?Working with Ionic Native to interface with device features, such as camera, notifications, and battery ?Building a production grade app using Ionic and Uber API to let users book a ride ?Migrating an Ionic 1 app to Ionic 2 or Ionic 3 ?Performing unit testing, end-to-end testing, and device testing on your apps ?Deploying Ionic apps to store and manage their subsequent releases In Detail Ionic makes it incredibly easy to build beautiful and interactive mobile apps using HTML5, SCSS, and Angular. Ionic also makes app development easier, faster, and more fun. This hands-on guide will help you understand the Ionic framework and how you can leverage it to create amazing real-time applications. We begin by covering the essential features of Angular 2, and then dive straight into how Ionic fits in today's world of hybrid app development and give you a better understanding of the mobile hybrid architecture along the way. Further on, you will learn how to work with Ionic decorators, services, and components, which will allow you to build complex apps using the Ionic framework. We will take a look at theming Ionic apps using the built-in SCSS setup. After that, we will explore Ionic Native, and you will learn how to integrate device-specific features, such as notifications, with the Ionic app. To complete our learning, we will be building a Rider app, using Ionic and Uber API, to book a ride. Next, you will learn how to unit test, end-to-end test, monkey test, and execute device testing on AWS Device farm. Then, we will take a look at migrating the existing Ionic 1 apps to Ionic 2 and deploy them to the App Store. The final chapter on Ionic 3 wraps up this book by explaining the new features of Ionic 3 at the time of writing this book. By the end of this book, you will be able to develop, deploy, and manage hybrid mobile applications built with Cordova, Ionic, and Angular. All the examples in this book are valid for both Ionic 2 and Ionic 3. Style and approach A step-by-step, practical approach to learning Ionic using the example of designing an online course app. Each topic is explained sequentially in the process of creating a course. This includes explanations of both basic and advanced features of Ionic. "

"Key Features ?Understand and use Vue's reactivity system, data binding, and computed properties ?Create fluid transitions in your application with Vue's built-in transition system ?Use Vuex and Webpack to build medium-to-large scale SPAs and enhance your development workflow Book De*ion Vue.js is an open source JavaScript library for building modern, interactive web applications. With a rapidly growing community and a strong ecosystem, Vue.js makes developing complex single page applications a breeze. Its component-based approach, intuitive API, blazing fast core, and compact size make Vue.js a great solution to craft your next front-end application. From basic to advanced recipes, this book arms you with practical solutions to common tasks when building an application using Vue. We start off by exploring the fundamentals of Vue.js: its reactivity system, data-binding syntax, and component-based architecture through practical examples. After that, we delve into integrating Webpack and Babel to enhance your development workflow using single file components. Finally, we take an in-depth look at Vuex for state management and Vue Router to route in your single page applications, and integrate a variety of technologies ranging from Node.js to Electron, and Socket.io to Firebase and HorizonDB. This book will provide you with the best practices as determined by the Vue.js community. What you will learn ?Understand the fundamentals of Vue.js through numerous practical examples ?Piece together complex web interfaces using theVue.js component system ?Use Webpack and Babel to enhance your development workflow ?Manage your "

"Accelerate and Automate Build, Deploy, and Management of applications to achieve High Availability. About This Book ?This guide highlights tools that offer development and deployment environments for application services ?Secure and continuously monitor your web application in order to make it highly available ?Use Visual Studio Team Services for Continuous Integration and Continuous Development to expedite your application life cycle management process ?Use Microsoft Azure App Services (Azure Web Apps / Azure Websites), PaaS offering from Microsoft to deploy web application Who This Book Is For This book is for DevOps engineers, system administrators, and developers (.net) who want to implement DevOps for their organization. You do not need to have any knowledge of VSTS or Azure App Services (Azure Web Apps / Azure Websites). What You Will Learn ?Explore the features of PaaS and aPaaS in DevOps ?Use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to manage versions of code and integrating VSTS with Eclipse IDE ?Understand and configure Continuous Integration in VSTS ?Review Unit Test Execution for Automated Testing ?Create different environments that can be used to continuous deploy a web application ?Configure Roll-based Access to enable secure access for Azure Web Apps ?Create and configure the App Service Environment to enhance security ?Understand the execution of the end-to-end automation process ?Conduct Performance Testing using JMeter ?Discover the different monitoring options available in Microsoft Azure Portal In Detail This book will teach you all about the Visual Studio Team Services and Microsoft Azure PaaS offerings that support Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Deployment, and execution in the cloud with high availability, disaster recovery, and security. You will first be given a tour of all the concepts and tools that Microsoft Azure has to offer and how these can be used in situations to cultivate the DevOps culture. You'll be taught how to use and manage Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and about the structure of the sample application used throughout the book. You will become familiar with the nitty gritty of Continuous Integration and Continuous Development with VSTS and Microsoft Azure Apps. You will not only learn how to create App service environments, but also how to compare Azure Web Apps and App Service Environments to deploy web applications in a more secure environment. Once you have completed Continuous Integration and created the Platform for application deployment, you will learn more about the final stepping stone in achieving end-to-end automation using approval-based Continuous Delivery and Deployment. You will then learn about Continuous Monitoring, using the monitoring and notification options provided by Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio Team Services. Style and Approach This book is an easy-to-follow guide filled with examples and real-world applications for gaining an in-depth understanding of Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio. This book will help you leverage Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio using real-world examples. "

Powerhouse romance editor Keira Madison is known as “Cover Girl” – because she’s come up with the concepts for the covers of the best selling novels in history. But right now, she’s desperate to replace her best selling author. Wannabe author Alex Bauer has given up hope of ever selling his military thriller, so he takes a shot at writing a romance and sends it to super agent Bella Farentino. She’s blown away by the book, but more shocked to find out the author is a man. So she decides it’s best to keep it a secret when pitching the novel – what does a man know about romance after all? When Keira buys the book, Alex needs a cover story to hide the fact he’s the real author. So he invents a fictional cousin who’s an agoraphobe; too shy to ever leave the house. He agrees to work as “her” intermediary during the editing process while getting a friend to “play” the author on the phone. One major problem. He falls hard for Keira, a spunky redhead who is a dead ringer for the heroine in the book. And she’s smitten with him, as he’s a clone of the novel’s romantic hero, a fictional Mister Right come to life. You see where this is going. As the release date for the book gets closer, their relationship grows stronger while the tale of the fictional author goes over the top. At some point Alex will have to come clean that he’s the real author of the book but worries he’ll risk losing Keira because she won’t be able to trust him. It’s “Tootsie” meets the publishing world… without anyone getting dressed up in drag.

Discover the incredible memoirs of internationally bestselling author Casey Watson with this free extended eBook sampler of Casey’s first book, and Sunday Times bestseller, The Boy No One Loved. Justin was five years old; his brothers two and three. Their mother, a heroin addict, had left them alone again. Later that day, after trying to burn down the family home, Justin was taken into care. Six years on, after 20 failed placements, Justin arrives at Casey’s home. Casey and her husband Mike are specialist foster carers. They practice a new style of foster care that focuses on modifying the behaviour of profoundly damaged children. They are Justin’s last hope, and it quickly becomes clear that they are facing a big challenge. Try as they might to make him welcome, he seems determined to strip his life of all the comforts they bring him, violently lashing out at schoolmates and family and throwing any affection they offer him back in their faces. After a childhood filled with hurt and rejection, Justin simply doesn’t want to know. But, as it soon emerges, this is only the tip of a chilling iceberg. A visit to Justin’s mother on Boxing Day reveals that there are some very dark underlying problems that Justin has never spoken about. As the full picture becomes clearer, and the horrific truth of Justin’s early life is revealed, Casey and her family finally start to understand the pain he has suffered…

A short story, based on characters from Solitaire – praised as ‘The Catcher in the Rye for the digital age’ The Times I used to think that difficult was better than boring, but I know better now… I’m not going to think about the past few months, about Charlie and me, and all of the sad. I’m going to block it all out. Just for today. "Happy Christmas, " I say. The festive season isn't always happy for Tori and her brother Charlie. And this year's going to be harder than most.